Baldness, alopecia, is a common phenomenon which often leads to general aesthetic dissatisfaction and sometimes even to psychological disorders. Seventy percent of males and 25 percent of females are, or will be, afflicted with some degree of baldness.
Non-surgical management of hair-loss, such as medical therapy and Minoxidil solution, has a temporary effect on baldness but the results are generally unsatisfactory. The use of wigs and toupees achieve only a cosmetic solution, generally providing poor aesthetic results. Surgical management remains the only permanent method of restoring hair; it includes hair transplants which make use of the patient's own hair and hair implants which use synthetic hair fibers.
One popular advanced surgical procedure, the Orentreich procedure, uses the patient's own hair and the transplant results in viable growing hair. A 1 cm wide skin strip (graft) is taken typically from the occipital part of the scalp of the patient and cut into small pieces. Each of these pieces contains typically 1-4 hair follicles. These small pieces are then surgically attached to the scalp typically using a microscope.
The Orentreich procedure is time consuming often requiring many sessions, is performed by a surgeon with the patient anesthetized and with a large support. The procedure results in scarring of the donation sites and requires a long recovery period. Importantly, it is fairly expensive and often produces less then satisfactory aesthetic results. The procedure is not suitable for all patients. It is not suitable in cases where there is no donation hair available or where there are burns on the scalp. It can, and often does, fail, since biological adoption of the transplanted hair is crucial for success. All these drawbacks deter people from using this technique.
Synthetic hair surgical procedures are “one hair at a time” procedures and they are anchored within the scalp by using knots or melt adhered loops in the hairs. This procedure is time consuming requiring many sessions, performed by a surgeon, and results in relatively large diameter insertions. Additionally, it is reported to have a yearly 20% failure rate due to poor anchoring. Typical synthetic hair implants use fibers and procedures developed by, for example, Medicap Ltd. of Italy and Nido Corp. of Japan.